ODE IN CONSOLATION FOR MISFORTUNE

He that would conquer must a soldier be.

He that a soldier will be must be made

To bear all the hard preface of his trade,

        All the rough training must he bear

Whereby he shall the conqueror

……

All pain, all failure and all woe ­

These are but training we must undergo

Ere those heights of ourselves we full can reach

        Whence God has things to teach

And the discarnate fate that girds us round

        Still more to teach and more to wound.

With patience and with fortitude

        Bear thou thy training rude,

Support with grace thy masters that are days

        Made of pain and amaze,

Thy potion take, even it that potion look

That Socrates for his divinity took.

To Aesculape the cock immolate,

        To the Masters of thy fate

Abandon life, thyself strong above all

        Thy power to let things thee appall,

By the sole virtue of thy power set far

        Over thy power to feel fate's war.

The rest, that thing that shall remain of thee

        When land and sky and sea

Alike are mist in thy unseeing eyes,

        This shall nowise

Mater, nor all when all is thine abode,

        Nor God himself when all is God.